Repeated flooding prompted the removal of the fort to the island known to locals as Ndar in 1659. The island was uninhabited at the time, supposedly because the local people believed it to be haunted by spirits. The Diagne of Sor, the local leader, permitted French settlement on the island for annual payments of “three pieces of blue cloth, a measure of scarlet cloth, seven long iron bars, and 10 pints of eau de vie.”

French view of the fort at Saint-Louis island, from “L’Afrique ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des Africains”, by René Claude Geoffroy de Villeneuve, 1814.

The fortification permitted its factory to command foreign trade along the Senegal River. Slaves, hides, beeswax, ambergris and, later, gum arabic were exported. During the Seven Years’ War, British forces captured Senegal in 1758. In February 1779, French forces recaptured Saint-Louis. In the late 18th century, Saint-Louis had about 5,000 inhabitants, not counting an indeterminate number of slaves in transit.

Colonial Saint Louis c. 1900. Europeans and Africans on the Rue Lebon.

Between 1659 and 1779, nine chartered companies succeeded one another in administering Saint-Louis. As in Gorée, a Franco-African Creole, or Métis, merchant community characterized by the famous “signares“, or bourgeois women entrepreneurs, grew up in Saint-Louis during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Métis were important to the economic, social, cultural and political life of the city. They created a distinctive urban culture characterized by public displays of elegance, refined entertainment and popular festivities. They controlled most of the up-country river trade and they financed the principal Catholic institutions. A Métis mayor was first designated by the Governor in 1778. Civic franchise was further consolidated in 1872, when Saint-Louis became a French “commune”.

Wreckage of the Medusa: La Méduse was a French naval frigate that boasted 40 guns and fought in the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Remarkably, the ship survived these maritime battles only to crash on a sandbank in 1816 during the reestablishment of the French colony after the British handover. A shortage of lifeboats sent sailors scrambling to build a raft. Only 10 of approximately 150 people who boarded the raft lived through this catastrophe. Shortly thereafter, Géricault drew his inspiration from the accounts of two survivors.

Louis Faidherbe, who became the Governor of the Colony of Senegal in 1854, contributed greatly to the development and modernization of Saint Louis. His large-scale projects included the building of bridges, provisioning of fresh drinking water, and the construction of an overland telegraph line to Dakar. Saint-Louis became capital of the federation of French West African colonies in 1895, but relinquished this role to Dakar in 1902.

Saint-Louis’s fortunes began to wane as those of Dakar waxed. Access to its port became increasingly awkward in the age of the steamship and the completion of the Dakar-Saint Louis railroad in 1885 meant that up-country trade effectively circumvented its port. Large French firms, many from the city of Bordeaux, took over the new commercial networks of the interior, marginalizing the Métis traders in the process. Saint-Louis nonetheless maintained its status as capital of the Colony of Senegal even after Dakar assumed the role of capital of the French West Africa federation. The colonial institutions set up in the city in the 19th century, such as the Muslim Tribunal and the School for Chiefs’ Sons, were to play important roles in the history of French Africa. Though relatively small in size (population of 10,000 in 1826; 23,000 in 1914, and 39,000 in 1955) Saint-Louis dominated Senegalese politics throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, not least because of its numerous political parties and associations and its independent newspapers.

Following independence, when Dakar became sole capital of the country, Saint-Louis slipped into a state of lethargy. As its French population and military departed, many of the town’s shops, offices and businesses closed. This generated a loss of jobs and human potential, and less investment in the economic activities of Saint-Louis, thus causing its economic decline. For some people, however, Saint-Louis’ decline was not just limited to its economy, but spread to all aspects of its life as the loss of its past status meant less recognition and lack of interest from the colony’s officials and, after Senegal’s independence, from the Senegalese government. When its most famous political son, the French-educated lawyer Lamine Guèye, died in 1968, the city lost its strongest proponent.

Today, rich in three centuries of history, in cultural background, geography, architecture, and other characteristics, Saint-Louis is a bridge between the savanna and the desert, the ocean and the river, tradition and modernity, Islam and Christianity, Europe and Africa.

Home to a society with a distinctive lifestyle, Saint-Louis has retained its unique identity. “No one comes without falling in love with the city,” proudly say its people who consider Saint-Louis as the birthplace of Senegalese Teranga, the Wolof word for hospitability.